20 April 2005



UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

Duluth Campus Department of Sociology -Anthropology 228 Cina Hall

1123 University Drive

College of Liberal Arts Duluth, Minnesota 55812-3306

Office:218-726-7551

Fax: 218-726-7759

25 September 2011

DAY Prehistoric Cultures Week 4:

Primates: An Overview

Prosimians, Monkey, Ape and Human

We’ll continue on and off to look at slide materials aimed at setting the basic analytic, theoretical and historical framework for the course, as time permits. We’ll get back to that next week . . . and in the weeks that follow.

Week 4 we’ll explore some classic materials in the field of Prehistoric Cultures.

One of the classic topics has traditionally been contemporary primate studies, and your text devotes considerable space to contemporary primates.

Why?

The bottom line is that to understand prehistoric primates one must understand contemporary primates. We could spend the entire semester on primates, and still not meet them all, and only begin to understand what they’re all about. What we’re going to do here, as your text basically does, is have an overview of the primate order. (The biological category to which primates belongs is known as an order.)

In addition—this week and next two or three weeks—we’ll continue to interweave some information on basic terms and concepts in prehistoric cultures into the class presentations.

For this week—for the entire semester, for that matter—focus on the ideas and main concepts, the differing points of view, and the overall timeframe (as reflected in the “Dates and Times to Remember” handout ).

This week you will receive a handout of the basic information on “Prehistoric and Contemporary Primates”. If you want, you can preview that at .

Whether you’re taking notes, watching the videos, or reading the text and related materials, try not to be too focused on memorizing a lot of names, dates, and isolated facts. Familiarize yourself with the materials, and the time/space outlines of the material (see “Dates and Times to Remember” above), and understand the patterns of what is going on, but don't spend too much time trying to commit the details to memory. (If you haven't read the materials about the Prehistoric Cultures exams yet, it might be a good idea to do that before too long. You can find the information on the midterm exam at .)

Speaking of skills related to investigating Prehistoric Cultures in general, and Primate Behavior in particular (and other anthropological topics inn general), this week we’ll have two short minute-and-a-half tests of your observational skills on primates—before we continue on in the weeks that follow with our intensive look at the wide variety of Prehistoric Cultures video materials. You’ll find these tests of primate observational skills at . . .

Selective Attention Test

The Monkey Business Illusion

Do the “Selective Attention Test” before you take “The Monkey Business Illusion.”

Once you’ve polished up your primate observation skills, we’ll set off to visit the four corners of the world, continuing primarily with Africa for the rest of the first half of the semester.

Thursday we’ll have a look at either  . . . Monkey, Ape and Man or Ape Genius. (It would be great to see them both, but we do not have enough class time to do that.)

Along our journey to the far corners of the earth, we’ll revisit the topic of genetics and DNA and in Week 13 we’ll have a go at pairing the concept of adaptation and the concept of variation (which we saw last week in the video Patterns of Variation with the concept of adaptation, which we’ll review in the video Patterns of Adaptation (Coast Learning Systems). (Patterns of Variation and Patterns of Adaptation both relate to the basic terms and ideas relating to Ch. 4 of the text Understanding Humans: “Human Variation and Adaptation.”)

Your [pic] Class Topics and Reading Assignments Listings for Week 4 will look something like the information at the end of this memo; the above items will be found at the bottom of this week’s [pic] listings under “Week 4 Activities “. Please do the activities on time.

If you have any questions about anthropology, or about the class and the assignments, please let me know: mailto:troufs@d.umn.edu. Or, better yet, post them on you [pic]Discussion and Project forum boards.

Share your ideas, including study-questions with your classmates. Discuss them on-line with the others in class . . .

DAY

DAY class wiki: General Student Discussion Area Forum

DAY project live chat: Live chat for Project Collaboration

CE

CE class wiki: General Student Discussion Area Forum

CE project live chat: Live chat for Project Collaboration

If you turned in your Case Study and have not yet received it back, and are wondering when you might get it back, please have a little bit of patience. I will return your Case Study probably with quite a few comments and notes. It generally takes between forty and fifty hours of reading and responding to papers to do that (for the two sections of Prehistoric Cultures). I’ll have them back as soon as I can. I try to look at the results from each class in the order in which they arrived.

Best Regards,

Tim Roufs

Your [pic] Presentations and Readings Listings for Week 4 will look something like this:

Anth 1602 Prehistoric Cultures

Week 4 — An Overview of the Primates

[pic]

DAY Week 4 Memo

|Handout: |

|"Prehistoric and Contemporary Primates" |

|Prehistoric and Contemporary Primates |

| |

|Introduction to the Primates |

|slides: (.pdf) (.pptx) |

|Prosimians ("Pre-Monkeys") |

|slides: (.pdf) (.pptx) |

|Monkeys |

|slides: (.pdf) (.pptx) |

|Apes |

|slides: (.pdf) (.pptx) |

| |

| |

| |

|[pic] |

|Male Chimpanzee |

|  |

|[pic] |

|Female Chimpanzee |

| |

|[pic] |

| |

|Bonobos |

|The Last Great Ape |

| |

|[pic] |

|Mountain Gorilla |

|(male) |

|  |

|[pic] |

|Western Lowland Gorilla |

|(female) |

| |

|Source:Turnbaugh, et al. (2002), p. 141, et passim |

| |

|[pic] |

|Australopithecus robustus in southern Africa 1 million years ago. |

| |

|DAY 08 Thursday, 29 September 2011 nlt 12:46 video: |

|CE Week 04 Monday, 3 October 2011 nlt 7:36 |

|Monkey, Ape and Man |

|(49 min., 1971, VC 802) |

|course viewing guide |

|[pic] |

| |

|Koshima Monkeys |

|or |

|DAY 08 Thursday, 29 September 2011 nlt 12:46 video: |

|CE Week 04 Monday, 3 October 2011 nlt 7:36 |

|Ape Genius |

|NOVA (ca. 54 min., 2008, QL737.P96 A64 2008 DVD) |

|film HomePage |

|[pic] |

| |

|For Week 4 Activities see [pic] |

|assignment: |

|~ |

|Ch. 6, "An Overview of the Primates," pp. 117-148 |

| |

|  |

| |

| |

| |

|[pic] |

| |

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